British Armed Forces

The British Armed Forces (BAF) are responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and the Crown dependencies. They also promote the UK’s wider interests, support international peacekeeping efforts and provide humanitarian aid.

The British Armed Forces have traditionally provided an assortment of training for their staff and HGVC manages this on their behalf.

• HGV Driver training programme was inefficient and could not be completed in the scheduled time.
• The pass rates were extremely low.
• There was no management of the training, resulting in the drivers and managers becoming confused about which drivers to send on which days.
• The instructors kept changing, resulting in the candidates not receiving the best training from instructors who understood the area.

Before starting the relationship we commenced an investigation and discovery process to determine why BAF’s existing driver training was not working.

We found the following issues with BAF’s programme:

• Not having direct contact with the driver or their manager
• Not having a manager to organise the contract to run smoothly
• Terrible pass rates

We offered BAF a managed service, that run everything through a centralised process. This would reduce communications and workload for BAF, allowing workers to focus on other important aspects of the business.

We created a standardised process that allowed us to do the following:

• Hire an on-island manager who would run the program in Cyprus and report back to the UK on the program.
• This on-island manager would establish communication lines between manager candidate and HR
• Hire instructors who would live in Cyprus for the duration of the contract, ensuring they know the roads and surrounding area’s.

First stage of implementation was sourcing a manager and two instructors to live in Cyprus for the contract. We sent several representatives from our team so we could ensure that we hired the right candidates for the contract. This built the relationship between key parts of the management team as well as allowed both parties to fully understand what was required.

Once selected we went out to Cyprus to meet with BAF so we could ensure that we understood how the contract was to be run processes and were able to educate the team, on how our management team both in UK and Cyprus would ensure the contract ran smoothly. This built the relationship between BAF and ourselves.

Within 1 month of the programme running, we saw tangible results. Pass rates had increased, and a training scheduled had been created to remove confusion as to who was on training that week.

We follow-up with monthly reports and a bi-annual review of the business.

Since working together we have seen the following results within 18 months:

First time pass rates are now at 85%, which exceeds the KPI of 75%

HGV training is prioritised due to the smooth booking process and the key relationship established by our on-island manager

With clear structure, there is now a 3 month timetable of candidates to take their HGV training and test.

We have learned through this process that creating a school in another country is not as hard as it appears. Additionally, having a clear, structured process, including a hands on manager, quickens the process and allows you to get more drivers trained and therefore allows you to meet demand.